One of the most popular communication technologies that has developed for mobile communications systems is the Short Message Service (SMS), which allows mobile users to communicate with other users via wireless communication devices including SMS-capable cellular mobile phones. Mobile users can send short text messages to other users by entering a text message and the destination address of a recipient user, who can be either a mobile or non-mobile user. The SMS system will transmit the text message as an SMS message from the mobile user to the recipient user. Similarly, a sender, who can also be mobile or non-mobile, can send SMS messages to a mobile user by entering a mobile user's address and the text message to be sent, after which the SMS system transmits the text message from the sender to the mobile user recipient. Thus, for an SMS system, either the sender or the recipient may be a mobile user, and non-mobile users may send SMS messages to and receive SMS messages from mobile users.
Based on the ability to send short text messages via SMS, a number of electronic information services have been developed around SMS technology. For instance, SMS has integrated a number of services including e-mail and fax, paging, interactive banking, and general information services such as providing financial information. Thus, SMS is not limited to transmitting simple text messages between mobile users, but has developed into a general system for wireless communication of electronic information between a mobile user and other users or networked computer systems that use SMS to send and receive messages to and from SMS-capable devices. As a result, an SMS message may include not only text messages entered by mobile and non-mobile users, but may also include e-mail, fax, paging, financial, news, and other electronic information.
It is presently known that personal computers or other Internet-accessible devices can send text messages to SMS-capable mobile devices via a web browser. As an example, Verizon Wireless® allows Internet users to access its web site and type a message intended for one of its subscribers. The Internet user then enters an identifier, e.g., telephone number or predefined user name, to identify the recipient subscriber. Upon submission, the message is sent to the SMS network via an Internet gateway.
It is also known that the SMS network allows message recipients to send a reply in response to a received SMS message.
When electronic information is communicated between a sender, e.g., an Internet-enabled personal computer, and a mobile user via SMS, it may be desirable to record the SMS communicated messages so that the sender may subsequently view a record of all the SMS messages he has sent as well as the respective replies to the messages. It would be preferable that the record of SMS messages be provided in a user-friendly format that is easily accessible to the sender.